Hey guys, you’ve probably noticed in your market a lot of new construction when it comes to apartments. That’s common across the country right now. Tons of apartments coming online, tons of rental properties.

What’s happening is it’s putting pricing pressure into the rental market. I own rentals in my own small town here in southern Oregon, and we’ve seen pricing pressure here locally.

And what that means is that people that have rentals might be feeling a little bit under pressure, especially the higher-priced rentals.

So let’s assume somebody bought a home. They’ve got a mortgage, they’ve got taxes, they’ve got insurance, they’ve got a property manager to pay, utilities—all the costs associated.

So you’ve got to ask a pretty steep price.

And now the number of renters willing to pay their price has dropped, so they’re sitting vacant.

This is an opportunity for you to pick up listings.

Watch for those high-end rental properties in your market. Watch those rental websites. Watch ...

Let me give you a quick, super simple thing that all REALTORS should do.

Once a week—maybe once a month at the very least—you should do the 24-hour report as a live report on your social feeds. It could be a Reel, could be a story.

But what is a 24-hour report?

It simply means you're on your hot sheet in the MLS, and you just read off the stats of the hot sheet. You're going to say something like this:

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“Hey, I just want to give you a quick update on what's happening with the market.”

It's been 24 new listings in the last 24 hours, 18 listings went pending, 32 have closed, and we've got 25 price reductions.

The market is really humming along. We've got a lot of great things.

I saw this really incredible buy come up that I'd love to share with you—if you're looking for a rental property, it looks incredible. We've got another one on a rural property that looks fun too, right on the river.

If any of you have a real estate need, I'd love to be somebody that you talk to. Give me a...

As a brokerage owner or leader, are you treating your current agents as your own personal SOI—your sphere of influence?

As an agent, you were trained to do this. You’ve heard it repeatedly from gurus, speakers, and podcasters: work your sphere. You need 20 to 50 contacts per year with your sphere to generate referrals.

But are you applying that same principle to your own agents?

Most brokerage owners and team leaders don’t. Then they wonder why recruiting is so hard. Recruiting feels difficult because they’re not getting referrals from their own agents.

The number one recruiting strategy for every brokerage owner in America should be this: your agents are so impressed, enthusiastic, and in love with what you do that they’re shouting from the rooftops, telling every agent in the market to work for you.

If that’s not happening, it’s because you’re not treating your agents with the same intensity and intentionality as your SOI.

So let’s change that. Treat them with the same respect ...

People often ask me, “Jim, what’s the secret to recruiting?”

Here it is: spend one hour a day recruiting—just like your agents are expected to spend one hour a day lead generating. We tell agents to prospect daily; as a brokerage owner or team leader, you need to do the same thing with recruiting.

I call this the “Five by Five” system. It’s a proven strategy we use in our company and with our brokerage coaching students across the country to drive performance and success.

Here’s how it works. Within that one hour of recruiting, you commit to:

• Making 5 calls
• Sending 5 texts
• Sending 5 video texts
• Writing 5 personal notes
• Doing 5 social media touches

If you hold yourself to that standard, you’ll start unlocking new opportunities.

The next question is: what do you say? What should you be texting, saying on calls, writing in notes, or posting on social media?

The key is natural, authentic conversations that resonate. Great recruiting isn’t about pushing for an appointment eve...

What is push-button recruiting?

If you're an office leader or team leader, you might be tempted to say, “I want to recruit, but I don't want to spend the time doing it. I just want to plug into a system—a CRM, AI platform, or some kind of tech—that will do the work for me. It’ll send emails, send texts, and every day it’ll do the job automatically.”

Then, like magic, people will just start calling, wanting to work for you.

Well, I wish that were true. That would be nice.

Another version of this is hiring virtual assistants overseas to make a thousand calls a day.

I'm going to tell you something you might not want to hear:

These systems, by and large, do not work.

On the rare occasion they do set an appointment, it’s usually with the lowest-hanging fruit—the kind of agent you don’t want anyway. These are people who’ve changed companies five times in a year.

Why doesn’t it work?

Because it’s not personalized recruiting.

Imagine you’re on the other end. If you're getting a gener...

As a real estate agent, you're probably looking for ways to generate leads in a unique or different way.

I'm going to give you one of those strategies right now. It’s completely outside the box, and I hope it gets your wheels turning and inspires a fresh perspective on your business.

Let me start with a fascinating statistic I first came across in The Millionaire Mind by Thomas Stanley. I’ve researched it myself over the years, and it consistently holds true:

90% of all millionaires—and people who will become millionaires—have volunteered or are actively volunteering in a charitable organization within their local community.

So, ask yourself:

Are you modeling that behavior by getting involved in local charities?

If not, what would happen if you started?

Here’s what happens when you do:

You begin networking with great people—people who are already successful or on their way to success. You’re also giving back to your community in a way that aligns with your passions.

If you’re ...

Quick question for you—since the beginning of the year, how much time have you invested in lead generation? Whether it's with your sphere of influence, open houses, FSBOs, expired listings, absentee owners, or geographic farming, where have you focused your efforts?

To maintain a consistent income without the ups and downs, you should be dedicating at least an hour a day to lead generation. But remember, we don’t do what we don’t schedule. If it’s not on your calendar, it’s unlikely you’ll actually do it. There will always be distractions pulling you away from this essential task.

Let me give you a simple strategy to ramp back up into regular lead generation. Because if you’ve been doing little to none for the past three to six months, jumping straight into an hour a day can feel overwhelming.

The solution? The Plus One Strategy.

It’s simple—just do one of these activities today:

• One call
• One text
• One video text
• One handwritten note
• One social media post

If you really wan...

Guys, I’ve got a great strategy for working with buyers. One of the biggest concerns buyers have is understanding the paperwork involved in real estate. It’s a real fear point—not just for buyers but for sellers too. But let’s focus on buyers for now.

Let’s take a different approach when handling paperwork with buyers. Here’s the worst thing you can do as an agent: You take a buyer out, show them homes, and they get excited about a specific one. Then, you bring them back to the office and say, “Okay, it’s time to write the offer.” You pull out 30–40 pages of paperwork, and suddenly, that excitement turns into hesitation. It feels like a bucket of cold water being dumped on them. They start second-guessing everything.

So, how do we prevent that? You take the sting out of the paperwork early. Here’s how:

During your initial consultation with the buyer, you say:

"One of the biggest value points I bring to the table is guiding you through the paperwork. There’s a lot—typically 30+ page...

Hey guys, are you afraid of ghosts? A lot of us are, but let’s put aside the spooky ghosts and talk about your business ghosts.

What are business ghosts?

If you dive into your CRM, your phone, or even your social media and see people you don’t recognize, you might think, “Maybe I should delete them.”

These are the ghosts in your machine—people you’ve forgotten. Don’t delete them!

Instead, I want you to rekindle that relationship. Here’s how: reach out via text, phone call, or direct message. Say, “Hey, I’m cleaning up my records and came across your name. I’m just trying to remember how we connected.”

They’ll respond with something like, “Oh, Jim, we met at an open house,” or “We met here or there.” Then you can say, “That’s right! I remember now. How are you guys doing?”

From there, you’ll rekindle the relationship. This could lead to a sale, a referral, or even a valuable connection that you would have deleted otherwise.

So, make sure you seek out these ghosts. If you spent on...

We see so much marketing that is irrelevant and meaningless — it doesn't resonate with anybody. It's trying to be ironic, cute, and Instagram perfect.

But nobody really cares so these marketing gimmicks fail.

What do our potential clients care about then?

Learning something new — which will always make them stop dead in their tracks and consider your message.

That's the basic idea behind my "Educational Marketing" strategy.

Now let's think of it in terms of real estate:

Not everyone has an interest in real estate. Buyers and sellers usually only get interested right before they're ready to sell their home or buy a new one.

So when a buyer starts to think that they should buy a house, that's when they start to look at all the terms and processes around real estate. Or when a homeowner gets interested in selling, that's when they suddenly get tuned into the market conditions.

That's the power behind using "Educational Marketing" to engage people instead of doing the same...